


backbone

by aperfectsong



Series: backbone [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5708245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aperfectsong/pseuds/aperfectsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."<br/>Clementine Paddleford</p><p> </p><p>After Lilly, but before Wallace, there was just Veronica—</p>
            </blockquote>





	backbone

 

 

 

After Lilly, but before Wallace, there was just Veronica—

 

Standing in a white dress at her front door, she holds a key that seems bent on missing the lock. No: she is underwater; dreaming; unsteady on her feet;; when she breathes in, the air has no place to go, or maybe just diffuses through her and out of her.

 

In the apartment above hers, raised voices do what voices do, but she does not hear them. She hears: _ask for a backbone_. Her mouth is full of cotton as she stares at her own hands and the keys they are holding onto. Or is it the keys holding her hands in place? Her brain, sluggish but persistent, makes other words: _mailbox. office. filing cabinet._ It tells her the apartment key is the jagged one she finally pushes into the lock and turns.

 

In the living room, Lilly’s ghost catches up--on the couch in her mother's spot wearing her pep squad uniform and saying, _Veronica, what are you going to_ do _?_ The apartment is empty and all Veronica wants is out of her skin. She can't touch anything. She can't sit down. Her legs stick together, but she does not cry. Instead, she turns on the shower and stares at the water, at the drain, at how maybe she could make it all un-happen. But she has a thought that cannot be unborn:

 

Do they all know? Do they all know except _her_?

 

She thinks of the evidence as a map draw out on her body, roads and rivers and landmarks leading to whoever is responsible, and so she turns off the water. She has to know for sure.

 

In a paper gown on a metal examining table, she studies veins and finger bones and the wrinkles of her knuckles, cuticles growing too far forward, nails bitten too low. She sits as though her body does not belong to her, as if the real Veronica is somewhere else, far away, in the sun. As she answers the nurse's questions, the voice comes from someone else. As the doctor touches inside of her and says words she knows but can’t process, the sound produced in her throat is not hers. The tears that blur her vision and catch on her cheeks are not hers. The fingernails that press themselves into the skin of her thighs are not hers.  _Stop_ , she says. It comes out a whisper. Hearing it somehow strengthens her, so she repeats it over and over. _Stop. Stop. Stop._

 

Veronica, afterwards, in the shower, fingers pruned, skin red and raw. Though the water is cold now, Veronica still sees things that aren’t there, things she can’t rinse away or scrub off. The water runs and first she tries to forget and then she tries to remember. Neither makes her feel less like it is a nightmare she won’t ever wake from. Neither makes her feel like a different person than the one this happened to. Under her mattress, she hides pamphlets from the hospital with numbers on them. Then she takes them out and looks at them. None of them can give her back her best friend or her mother or her old life. None of them can give her justice. None of them can undo it.

 

In her bedroom the next morning, among emptied drawers, she sits red-eyed, hair shorn, next to a garbage bag. She has school tomorrow and the only way she can face it – the hallways of faces, the taunts, Duncan and Logan as her enemies, the people who write _slut_ on her car – is as a different Veronica, a Veronica who doesn’t need anyone else, a Veronica who is both a shadow and a person. Her dad opens the bedroom door. “Spring cleaning three months early?” he asks. Veronica looks around her own room at dresses she doesn’t want anymore, at sweaters that remind her of Duncan, at the bag filled with memories that hurt.

“Dust bunnies. I saw a documentary,” she says.

“Did they get in your hair too?” he asks.

“Everywhere,” she answers.

 

Then she doesn’t end up going back to school the first week after winter break. Instead, she calls herself in sick. She tells her dad she has a bad cold, and he sees her red eyes and red nose and buys her three cans of soup. She emails her teachers to ask about homework. She lies in bed and reads textbooks without understanding them. Sometimes she falls asleep and wakes herself up gasping. Sleeping is hard. Backup sits at the foot of her bed and though the sound of his breathing keeps her awake, she doesn’t make him leave.

 

She makes herself remember the party, teasing details out of her hazy memory, writing them on paper she folds and hides under her mattress as evidence: taking the white dress off its hanger, putting on eyeliner in front of the bathroom mirror, parking her car at the end of the long driveway at Shelley’s, putting her keys into her purse as she approached the house, the surprised way everyone stared at her when she entered. She hadn’t planned to stay long, just long enough to show them they couldn’t beat her, that she was stronger than they thought. She could have stayed home.

 

She could have stayed home.

 

She could have stayed home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week later, she studies the faces of her classmates when they aren’t looking and wonders, _Was it him_? Someone in her Spanish class? Someone in honors geometry? Or maybe someone she doesn’t know at all, someone she passes in the hallway but can’t name. She holds her books tight across her chest and the metal coils of her notebook press lines into her arm. Her eyelids are heavy, her sleep broken, full of shadows, and she doesn’t know if they are real or imagined.

 

During each passing period, she sits in the bathroom stall listening for rumors and finally, they come. Not the one she’s waiting for. Maybe it’s a good thing that even 09ers don’t brag about sexual assault. She hears the other rumors though, so exaggerated even the girls repeating them have to know they aren’t true, the ones she knows started with Logan.  She hears her name combined with slurs, spoken with disgust and even anger. It takes the whole morning to make her certain they don’t know.

 

She heads to the bathroom during her lunch period. She doesn’t eat, just pulls her feet up in the stall and pretends to be invisible. It’s how she learns Shelley and Duncan are together, not just were together, once. Now, there’s knowledge in her body – this would not have happened if Lilly had lived. Next to Lilly Kane, Veronica Mars was untouchable. Without her, she became someone who could be drugged and raped with no repercussions. The thing she hates most is whoever it was, he probably sees her still, probably sees the way she has tried to make herself strong, the way she has changed herself to obscure and camouflage her own weaknesses. It probably makes him feel powerful.

 

Sometimes she remembers the people who used to be her friends like she might remember a scene from a movie, a montage from someone else’s life. She sees them in the hallway: Meg, Yolanda, Logan, Duncan, even Shelley, and she thinks back on them, looking for the breaks in character, the sideways glances that must have been there, that said, Veronica Mars, you have no worth on your own; Veronica Mars, we know how to hurt you; Veronica Mars, you deserve this.

 

On Tuesday, she runs into Logan on her way out of the social worker’s office after one of her grief counseling sessions. Her face is blotchy but at least her eyes are dry. She is supposed to go to English class; she has the pass in her hand. For a moment, he looks at her and she thinks he might apologize for not being there when she needed him, for turning her into a victim, for showing everyone else what she was all along. But his stare turns cold and so she goes past him and out the main doors of the building. One of her tires is flat, but she drives it out of the parking lot anyway. She learns.

 

On Wednesday, in political science, she doesn’t realize she is sleeping: in an unfamiliar bed, someone pushes her down by her shoulders until she is immobile. Everything is dark and she can’t struggle, can’t make a sound, can’t move her body. There are hands at her waist, pulling her dress up, a vague pain she can’t push away, but she doesn’t remember exactly how it felt; instead, there is a hole her imagination fills with pieces that don’t quite fit, not-quite-memories that could be better or maybe worse than the truth. The pain is a pressure, the fear a paralysis, the hands on her shoulders heavy and solid. Then they are shaking her awake to her own voice, not quite screaming, not quite whispering, and she feels skin beneath her nails. She blinks into the face of a teacher and the hands pull back from Veronica as if burned. She sees the crescent moon indentions of her fingernails on white palms before her teacher hides her hands behind her back. All of the eyes in the room look at Veronica.

 

Then she is in the hallway with a pass in her hand, her bag sliding down from its place on her shoulder. In the school social worker’s office, Veronica says she had a nightmare, but refuses to elaborate. The social worker asks how she has been sleeping. Veronica doesn’t say anything, but shakes her head. She is afraid that if she says one thing, she will say everything. She does not trust the woman across from her who sips every couple of minutes from a mug of coffee, and watches like she knows how it feels. After twenty minutes of silence, the social worker leaves a message for Veronica’s father at the office and she is permitted to go to lunch. She sits by herself at a table across from her old table without eating and makes eye contact with the people who stare at her. Slowly, they look away. The whispering doesn’t stop, but quiets when she’s near. She doesn’t know what she said, asleep in political science, but along with the disgust in the eyes of the other students, she sees fear too. Duncan meets her eyes once from his table, but she stares until he looks away. Logan is the only one who meets her eyes with the same intensity, the same cold defiance. But then Casey whispers in his ear and then he looks away, too, and turns to his friend. When he looks back, his expression is blank.

 

That night, her dad asks if she wants to move. She takes a bite of pizza. She considers starting again in a place where no one knows her, where she can disappear into ambiguity, where she isn’t the best friend of a dead girl, or a slut with a reputation she didn’t earn. She tells him that she wasn’t going to run away either. But there’s more that she doesn’t tell him: there’s justice. If she leaves… if she leaves without knowing, whoever did it will never pay.

 

After her dad goes to sleep, she takes out the pamphlets again and reads about insomnia and nightmares and a reluctance to be touched. She reads about breathing and counseling and not seeing yourself as a victim. The next morning, Veronica puts on heavy boots, carries a Taser, and cultivates what the social worker calls an antisocial personality. Except for the anonymous attacks on her car and locker, except for the rumors and jeers, people mostly leave her alone. She becomes a different kind of untouchable. She does not make conversation. No one reaches out for her shoulders or taps her on the back. No one hugs her. No one hurts her.

 

 

 

 

The following week, when the grief counseling sessions are scheduled again and a pass arrives that takes her out of PE, Veronica sits in the chair, making eye contact but saying nothing. She listens to the questions posed to her, to the wide spaces in between them where nothing is said: _How are you sleeping? Has there been anything you’ve tried that serves as an outlet to your grief? I’ve noticed you have become increasingly separate from your peers. Sometimes, when people feel they have been abandoned, they cut off all emotional ties so no one else can hurt them. Have you spoken or written to your mother?_

 

At the end of the thirty minute session, Veronica’s hands are curled into fists. When she pushes open the office door with too much force, it almost hits the person waiting outside. “Whoa, take it easy,” the voice says and laughs. It reveals itself to be Logan. He sees who she is and the smile is replaced by a grimace. He opens the door and steps into the office she just left. She can hear the social worker say, “Just have a seat. I have a few notes to make.” before the door closes fully behind him.

 

There are days she makes herself think it: Lilly is dead. I was raped. My mom is not coming back. Duncan and Logan are not my friends. But this mantra makes her frenzied, pulls her into herself and leaves her blank and vulnerable. So she stops.

 

 _Get tough. Get even._ It becomes her mantra. It becomes everything.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story in the VM fandom, but may be the first of a few interconnected one shots. I have about 21 pages of VM fanfic I wrote as a break from my novel during National Novel Writing Month. If I can make the rest into cohesive stories, I'll post them, too. The other stories are more Veronica/Logan, but still deal with the aftermath of Shelley's party.


End file.
